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Story:The End of Eternity/E2
II An Eternal, the Artifact The bell in the clock tower chimed in for the second time that day, and the sun’s bright rays glistened over the large school campus. In its light shimmered the bustling landscape of academics, and beneath its brilliance were several thousand students migrating to their classes and habitats. Despite how bright the morning was, a cool breeze blew through the area, keeping the air from growing too hot or humid. In five minutes the third and final bell would ring and classes would begin. Arend Vitalis sat in a chair in the third floor classroom of one of the school’s various tall buildings. His seat was furthest in the back and closest to the window, so he sat with his legs crossed and watched the outside of the class from the window intently. The boy had been in the room for a while now in the same position, just watching. This was Arend’s first day in school after his family moved to this new nameless city. After waking and remembering the chilling deaths of the two siblings, he knew that the only way for him to clear his mind was to waste time in school. The institution as a whole was a not-so subtle attempt to continue the long-gone traditions and practices of the pre-Collapse world. School, even the one the boy attended now, was one such outdated practice. As soon as he graduated at the end of the semester, Arend would find himself thrust into the world of complacency and industrial conformation, yet another outdated and pointless human practice. As he sat there, brooding, the first student shuffled into the classroom without warning, sighing and shivering. Arend did not move from his vigil and continued to stare out of the window, gazing at nothing in particular and trying not to think of the events of the previous day. The newly entered student fumbled over to their desk and plopped their books onto it before pausing in their movements. They seemed to notice him for the first time and, with a joyful smile, walked over to him. “Wow, you’re here early! You must be the new student, right…? How come you didn’t show up when school started? What’s your name?” The student’s voice, bubbly and high-pitched, was undoubtedly female. Arend, slow to hear the questions and even slower to respond, only looked up at the inquirer with disgust. “Oh - my apologies! Sorry! It’s polite to give my own name first, isn’t it…?” The girl laughed nervously and hugged herself. Goosebumps prickled noticeably from her arms, although it wasn’t clear if they originated from the coldness of the room or the coldness of the boy in front of her. “I’m Natalia, Natalia Monomus. And you are…?” The boy simply stared at the newly dubbed Natalia, who had thrust her hand forward to initiate a handshake. She was a pretty young girl, with a softly formed face and shoulder-length curled black hair. Her lips, hands, and legs were petite and all tinted a light pink from her chilled state. Besides the uniform jacket, she wore a skirt with knee-high stockings to complete her wardrobe. In her eyes, the boy could almost see a swirl of genuine friendliness and happiness. That sort of look was what he hated the most. With a grunt, Arend turned his head back to the window and readjusted his stance in the seat. As quietly as he could while staying audible, he stated his name. “Arend Vitalis.” Natalia stood in place, somewhat taken aback at Arend’s rude actions. “Okay then, Arend… That’s a cool name! Where are you from?” He said nothing. A long moment passed as Natalia alternated between looking down and staring at Arend. “Have we met before…?” she added, in a vain attempt to start conversation. It failed. As she awkwardly bit her lip and opened her mouth once more to speak, the door to the classroom groaned and opened once more, and a group of chattering teens walked in talking to each other. Natalia jumped at the sudden sound before looking back at Arend and smiling. “Well, I guess I’d better get to my seat now… If you need anything, feel free to ask me, okay?” With a final glance back at Arend, Natalia turned and demurely sat at her own seat, two rows diagonally away from his. After that, the rest of the class’s students trailed into the room and its seats were gradually filled. The boy, undisturbed by another classmate for the time being, continued sitting in his position and watched as the school lot quickly emptied. Just as the last visible student ran into a building, the final bell rang, and the class’s chatter began to quiet. Arend welcomed the level of quiet and the new peacefulness found in the school yard below. There were no longer any idiotic people scurrying around, no more disgusting practices taking place on the otherwise well-structured grounds. Unfortunately, that meant some of the people had moved to the class around him. He shook his head and let out a quiet sigh. It looked like this school would be no different from the last – worthless, boring, and outdated. The teacher, a handsome middle-aged man with stubble across his entire square jaw, entered the room a minute or two after the last bell. He greeted the class, handed out new textbooks, and went about taking down names from everyone in the room. The period varied little from petty jokes and vague directions on how the rest of the year would go for the class. Arend paid no attention to any of it. When the bell rang to signify that the class was over, little more than an hour into the beginning of it, Arend was the last to leave the class. The teacher, whose name Arend did not even bother to remember, called him over to his desk, but he ignored him and continued walking. He missed watching the courtyard already; there was a certain tranquility to be found in an area devoid of human presence. Outside of the classroom, the hallway was already mostly empty. Arend walked through the thin crowds to his next class, the second of the five he had in a day. His hands were perpetually in his pockets. He looked at no one. To do so out of turn would have filled him with complete revulsion, and after the incident from the previous day, he resigned that it would be best to speak to no one at all. The rest of his first day in the school went on mostly as it did in his first period. He arrived first to every class and sat in a seat in the back of every class. He spoke to no one, and bothered to look at few. Perhaps because it was his first day in the new school, Arend had little work handed to him, but he finished what was assigned quickly and with little effort. Due to his attitude and aloof looks, nobody else bothered to approach him, which was just as he wanted. Arend Vitalis was, for the most part, completely alone. He could feel the weight of the dead siblings on his back, crawling from his ears and sealing his mouth shut. Even then, he was alone. The view from the first class’ window, which was never again replicated in any of his assigned classes, was the only thing that he enjoyed in the school, and he missed it greatly after he left the first class. Once the last bell of the day rang, Arend left his final class and began to walk towards the third floor of the second-year’s building, where he had attended his first morning class hours before. Within minutes, all the students had mostly absconded from the campus, no doubt returning to their homes or participating in whatever they called a social life. The small amount of leftovers who stayed for sports or club practices entered their respective buildings and soon closed themselves off to their work. In other words, the courtyard would be clear when Arend returned to his view. That was pleasing, at least. Besides wandering the streets or studying, there was little for Arend to do but gaze in the peaceful view for hours – so he decided to do just that. He arrived at the classroom when the male teacher was locking up his desk drawer and gathering his papers. Arend did not expect him to be there and was surprised, so for an instant he stood in the doorway, halted with his hands in his pockets. The teacher, who heard his arrival, looked up and glanced at Arend with joy. “Oh! You’re the new student! Well then… You must have been shy, so you came to introduce yourself after class, right? How thoughtful!” The teacher dropped his documents back on his desk and rubbed his stubble-decorated chin with delight. He was a middle-aged man who didn’t like children very much, but found himself flattered in the fact that one of the students he taught needed his help. There, in the teacher’s eyes, was that same look of hope and unintelligent joy that Arend had first seen hours ago in his classmate, in the beginning of the school day. Someone like Natalia or their teacher would never be able to relate to Arend and his dreams of destruction and salvation, he knew. Just as before, the hopefulness filled him with boiling disgust. “Just as I thought,” Arend growled to himself, “I’ll never meet anyone like those two again.” After deciding on this he was silent and simply walked past the teacher, his moment of hesitation long gone. He walked past the rows of seats and nonchalantly sat in his desk, turning his head and crossing his legs without removing his hands from his pockets, and only then began to reply loud enough for the teacher to hear. “I don’t want to talk to you, or anybody else.” The teacher both faltered and stammered a bit. “Well, what do you want from me, then? Don’t you have somewhere to be?” “…I thought that’d be obvious. I’m enjoying the view from this seat. There is much to observe.” Indeed, the campus of his new prep school was gigantic; it consisted of several ash gray multi-tiered buildings that sprawled across acres of steel courtyard and black fencing. Large tracts of land and daunting security - that was the typical amount of care that a government-funded location would have put into it. Along with an overly-large budget, of course. Within moments, to clarify his statement, Arend added, “I really don’t need anything from you.” This left the teacher speechless. The room was silent again as the deflated teacher continued the menial task of gathering his school documents into a briefcase as weathered as he was. There was nothing more for either of them to say. For a brief moment, Arend felt nothing but biting disdain for the spineless teacher, but this soon disappeared and his face took on its usual property of stone indifference. The quick burning fire within him had been swallowed completely by a tidal wave of nothingness. He knew that this would hurt the older man more than any anger he could portray, and he was correct. “Oh, I knew I’d find you here!” As the teacher left the room, the door opened one more time, and Natalia entered the room. “Ah, sir!” She faltered as the teacher paused, but he simply walked around her and stomped his way out of earshot. She was speechless herself as she looked after the man, but only wasted a few seconds looking after him before returning her attention to the classroom. As expected, Arend Vitalis was sitting in his seat and staring out of the window, and looking at him, she knew immediately what had caused their instructor to leave in such a huff. She smiled a faint, nervous smile, and began to walk towards her classmate. “You ignored our teacher just like you did with me, huh?” Natalia giggled and crossed her arms. “I was right after all.” Arend raised an eyebrow, but did not move. “Right about what?” “You! That you’re different. Unique. And very cool.” The boy frowned and his hands curled into irritated fists. “What do you want with me?” “To be honest, I’d like to talk with you!” Arend could not help but humorlessly chuckle. “No, you don’t. Trust me.” He did not have to look at Natalia to know how innocent and fragile she was. They had nothing in common and nothing interesting to talk about, and if he spoke to her about the resolutions he had made within his mind, he was not sure if she would be able to resist ripping out her ear canals too. After all, he thought to himself with sadness, the ones who had driven the siblings to their disappearance was likely him and him alone. “But I do. You know… I’ve never seen anyone like you before,” she whispered to him after a few moments of standing close to him and looking out of the window. “I was thinking about you all day today.” She had been gazing just as intently as he was, but could not seem to see the same things, for the outside did not hold her attention as strongly as it held his. Natalia Monomus had never been in love before, never had been taken aback by a sudden and irreparable change to her normal life and her normal emotions, never questioned the state of the world she lived in, never wondered if she sinned, and she had never laid eyes on a figure who refused to be held down by normality. This was what she was expressing to Arend Vitalis by her very presence. He understood it, and it filled him with disgust. “You hate me, don’t you?” She blurted out. “I hate a lot of things,” Arend answered flatly, “but I’m not sure if you’re one of them, yet.” Natalia looked down, her breath stolen by the strength of his gaze. “I’m sorry. What is going on with me?” She laughed nervously. “What a great first impression… Er, wait, what? Did you say…? Does that mean you don’t hate me?” The boy looked back up at her with curiosity, an archaic form of newfound inquisitiveness, and with irritation. “What is your biggest fear, Natalia?” “Not living up to my parent’s expectations, I guess… or dying old and alone, without a family or someone to love. Not being efficient enough. Or doing something to displease God. But what does that…?” “God, huh…?” Arend frowned; his countenance darkened. The girl stood with her hands intertwined with each other for a minute before she regained her senses and started to play with her hair. “I, um… Have you ever fallen in love before?” Natalia looked as if she regretted what she said as soon as she said it, and her face bloomed brightly with blush. The boy rolled his eyes. “No. Never. I am not capable of such things.” “Wh-what? You mean… You like…” “No one. Not women, not men… no one. I feel no desires towards anyone else.” He shrugged and kept his eyes to the window. “Anything else you’d like to know?” Natalia reddened deeper and looked down to her feet. Truthfully she could have spoken to him for hours, but now she felt as if she were tripping over her own words, so she cut right to the question she was most curious about. “What about you, then? What are you most afraid of?” It took Arend a long time to answer, and when he did, his voice was so quiet and tremulous that Natalia barely heard him. “Like you, I fear dying before my goals are met.” “And your goals… What are they?” “The end of my eternity spent waiting, watching, and hoping.” He spoke smoothly and evenly, as if his words were rehearsed and scripted, but Natalia only heard a tone of painful weariness within him. The motives behind his asocial behavior were a heavy burden that he and only he was destined to hold, and he had let her hold a hand beneath it as he let up its weight by just a fraction. She felt as if she had been crushed by the weight and instantly felt a feeling of infinite exhaustion and sympathy rush through her brain. “I’m sorry, Arend, but… I don’t understand.” “You never will.” The simple words summarized everything to each other, and neither of them felt that they needed to speak anymore. Natalia began to feel she knew the entirety of Arend’s nature. “I really think I’ve met you before,” she whispered in a small voice. The two stood in their spots without moving for hours after that. At least, it felt to Natalia like they stood for such a long time; the silence enveloping them was suffocating, almost malicious in its totality. Arend sat watching the expansive courtyard and Natalia stood watching him, both of them looking through what was visible to see what was ethereal but alive. It did not take long for Natalia to feel overwhelmed and bored. Suddenly the tall clock tower in the courtyard rang nine times and Natalia shifted, jolted up from a deep slumber by the noise. She looked around, suddenly uncomfortable with her situation, and shifted her bag’s strap on her shoulder. “I have to go.” She spoke with apprehension, but Arend did not care, nor did he respond. She began to dig in her bag. “I have something for you that I want you to keep… forever,” None of what she was feeling or saying made sense to her, but that was something she had accepted soon after they had met. The two had only been acquaintances – not even friends – for less than a day, but Natalia knew everything about him already, knew it in her heart and soul, as if it were something that all people only had to study briefly before grasping acutely and accurately. And yet she knew nothing. After a minute of searching, she pulled out an object and held it before her timidly. It was heavy in her hands, a creation with a unique and unusual weight, but she would forget this uniqueness within moments of relinquishing it, because – in the same way she had simply known where Arend was and had simply known how she felt about him – she knew the object was never hers to hold. She never knew why she had the artifact, nor where she had gained it from, or how it got in her bag, but the fact was that she had always had it and now knew that it was time for her to give it up. It meant nothing to her but, at the same time, it had a meaning and stood for something, on a quality of its own. She did not understand any of it. As she waited for him to turn around, slowly and without interest as always, Natalia looked at Arend’s sharp, ever thinking features, his disdain and shunning of society, and fancied him to be a dream. He was a dream that she had been having for all of her life but could never quite remembered upon waking up, and an endless nightmare that would haunt her long after she cut ties with him. She had never been sure of anything else in her life like she was with Arend Vitalis this day. He took note of her offering and turned, looking at her with those same dull, uncaring eyes. His eyes always looked about as if everything they saw was beneath them, and Natalia was no different. That gaze was unlike anything she had ever seen before, because unlike most others, Arend didn’t look at a person like they were worth his time, or worth any amount of oxygen, or even that they were human. She did not want him to look at her in any other way for as long as he lived. Natalia held out a golden pen, long and elegantly built in its simplicity. It did not sparkle or have a particularly noteworthy luster, but it seemed to hold a bright sheen when held in Natalia’s pale hands, one that stole Arend’s attention and held onto it tightly. In silence he reached out to the pen and took the offering from his admirer. The pen was surprisingly heavy, but its weight was perfect for his hands, and he found that he enjoyed holding it. He gave the pen a cautionary twirl in his hand before holding onto it tightly and returning his hand to his pocket, the pen in tow. Arend, still silent, looked back up to Natalia. She was gone. Hours later, once night had fallen, Arend stood up from his seat. As he walked out of the classroom with slow, measured steps, he stopped by her desk and looked at a piece of paper that she had haphazardly left on it. On a whim, he pulled out the golden pen and began to write on the paper, not knowing what he was planning to express or even why he began to do it. The pen did not write. He knew why its weight felt just right in his hands. <- Back | Next ->